MILWAUKEE — There comes a moment in every Knicks game when hilarity ambles over to the scorer’s table, draws a buzzer, shuffles onto the floor, and announces: “I got this.”

It can take many forms. It can be three unused timeouts jangling around in Mike Woodson’s pocket like so many loose nickels and quarters. It can be a player with a physical addiction to shooting the basketball, J.R. Smith, deciding to freeze himself out of the offense on a bizarre night in Boston, limiting himself to but one shot.

It’s always something and it usually explains, as well as anything, why the Knicks have lost another basketball game. Just not always. Every now and again you can bump into a team like the Milwaukee Bucks, awful on their best nights, unspeakably so when they’re missing their two leading scorers.

No matter. Hilarity demands to be heard.

And there comes a moment like the one Wednesday night, time running out in overtime, the Knicks clinging to a two-point lead, desperate to escape Wisconsin with some manner of self-respect. Carmelo Anthony missed a shot but Tyson Chandler — a welcome sight, a splendid return from injury — swatted at the rebound, his trademark maneuver, batting it back out to the waiting hands of Andrea Bargnani.

This would be the ballgame. The shot clock was off, and the Bucks would have to foul, and the Knicks could win the game at the foul line, and —

AND HOLY HELL, DID HE JUST SHOOT A 3-POINTER?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

“Maybe he thought I shot an airball and he had to shoot,” Anthony would say later.

“Maybe he thought we were behind,” Mike Woodson said.

“I made a mistake,” Bargnani said.

Photo: SB Nation

All three men were smiling as they said this, the Knicks having survived Bargnani’s brain lock and a game-tying tip-in by John Henson with three-tenths of a second left in OT, surviving five more minutes of a grisly second overtime, taking a 107-101 decision in a game that, it can be said without reservation, it was a shame that anyone had to win.

The Knicks’ bench wasn’t smiling when its occupants watched Bargnani fling up that 3, their various agonies captured in a riotous GIF, most of them looking as if they’d all come down with an instant case of food poisoning. The Internet practically melted in the minutes following; I thought a few Knicks fans might spontaneously combust on social media. It might have spared them further misery.

“You see a lot of things in this game,” Woodson said.

He bore the distinct look of a man who fully realized how close he’d come to having to explain the inexplicable to his bosses again — AGAIN — a bookend to the 24.2 seconds that cost the Knicks so dearly against Washington two nights earlier. The Knicks don’t just play basketball games anymore, they conduct regular “Survivor”-style tribal councils, with Woodson testing his luck time and again, each time getting to stay on the island for another few days.

The shame of all of this is that with Chandler’s return, the Knicks ought to be optimistic about where this can all lead them. The overtimes meant he played far longer than the 25-28 minutes Woodson wanted him to, and a couple of times he grabbed his legs, and that surely caused palpitations among the faithful (though they were due to cramping in his still-reconditioning legs).

Still, for the first time since Election Day, the Knicks are starting to resemble a whole team again. And for goodness’ sake, can you even believe the Atlantic Division? As badly as the Knicks tried to pour gasoline on themselves last night, they actually picked up ground on everybody — the Sixers behind them, who were idle, and the Celtics, Raptors and Nets ahead, who all lost at home.

And yet …

There was Smith, whose affinity for Woodson has to be obvious, because the only thing better than a coach who’ll let you shoot SEVENTEEN 3s is one who will let you miss 12 of them. There was Melo, forced to play 55 minutes, barely able to lift his arms after firing off 29 shots. And, of course, there was Bargnani’s pop-a-shot adventure.

Hilarity wherever you turn.

“We weathered the storm,” Woodson said, and they did, till noon on Saturday, Memphis at the Garden and a whole world of comedic possibilities eager to be embraced.